RSS FeedWhen the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. And suddenly out of the sky came a sound like a strong rushing wind and it filled the whole house where they were sitting. There appeared tongues as if of fire which parted and came to rest upon each one of them. All were filled with Holy Spirit and began to speak other languages, as the Spirit enabled them to speak.
Staying in Jerusalem were religious Jews from every nation under heaven. When they heard this sound, a crowd gathered, all excited because each heard them speaking in his own language. Full of amazement and wonder, they asked, “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? How is it that we hear them in our own native language? Here are Parthians, Medes and Elamites and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia, Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and foreigners who accept Jewish beliefs, Cretians and Arabians; and all of us hear them proclaiming in our own language what God, the Savior, does."
There is diversity of gifts, but the Spirit is the same. There is diversity of ministries, but the Lord is the same. There is diversity of works, but the same God works in all.
The Spirit reveals his presence in each one with a gift that is also a service. One is to speak with wisdom, through the Spirit. Another teaches according to the same Spirit. To another is given faith, in which the Spirit acts; to another the gift of healing, and it is the same Spirit. Another works miracles, another is a prophet, another recognizes what comes from the good or evil spirit; another speaks in tongues, and still another interprets what has been said in tongues. And all of this is the work of the one and only Spirit, who gives to each one as he so desires.
As the body is one, having many members, and all the members, while being many, form one body, so it is with Christ. All of us, whether Jews or Greeks, slaves or free, have been baptized in one Spirit to form one body and all of us have been given to drink from the one Spirit.
On the evening of that day, the first day after the Sabbath, the doors were locked where the disciples were, because of their fear of the Jews, but Jesus came and stood in their midst. He said to them, “Peace be with you”; then he showed them his hands and his side. The disciples kept looking at the Lord and were full of joy.
Again Jesus said to them, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” After saying this he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit; for those whose sins you forgive, they are forgiven; for those whose sins you retain, they are retained.”
Acts 2:1-11, I Corinthians 12:4-13 and John 20:19-23 - Proper of Pentecost Sunday (year C)
The Bible (Pastoral Community Version)
Ah, the Holy Spirit, this unknown character! I remember when I was a pre-adolescent in the Baptist church, and I was taught in Sunday School classes, very didactically, to divide History in "God the Father", "God the Son", and "God the Holy Ghost". So, this means that: since the creation of the World until year 0, it was God the Father; Jesus, from year 0 to year 33 and the Holy Spirit after that (until Jesus Christ comes for the second time), as if each one of the persons of the Trinity were soldiers in their service time shifts.
This definition of the Holy Spirit as someone who merely succeeds Jesus in History never satisfied me. And then, at a retreat, I heard about the gifts of the Spirit... which were not even limited to those described in Corinthians (as we have read today)... There was more: people who would dance frantically, as if they were in trance, the so-called "anointings", manifestations of "sleeping in the Spirit"... So... Newer experiences, although equally controversial, and in many cases obfuscated by ugly scandals, which usually happened among leaders in charismatic/pentecostal circles.
I don't mean to say that I know, now, what is the Holy Spirit (and the good thing about being an Anglican is that I can say that without any fear of being stoned). Do not fool yourselves, my friends: the Holy Spirit is ethereal like a dove. And we do not have any concrete vision of this person of the Trinity, apart from the dove over Jesus, when He was baptized. The Holy Spirit is, perhaps, the most mysterious face of God.
And I don't doubt that the Spirit is a bit of each of those experiences I lived. I think, however, that God is much more than that, and today's event (Pentecost) is crucial if we want to understand the message that the Spirit wants to announce to the churches.
Pentecost comes from Greek and means "the fiftieth day". It is the hellenized name for the Jewish feast of Shavuot, a celebration of the first harvests in Canaan, after the escape from Egypt. It is also marks the time when Moses received the Torah on Mount Sinai.
Today, we understand that the Exodus saga and the writing of the Torah have occurred in a much more complex way than what a literal interpretation of the Bible could tell us. It is important, though, to realize the significance of this day, that marked to the People of God the beginning of a new History, and the gratitude for God having revealed His Word.
Biblical hermeneutics also points out the opposition between Pentecost and Babel. The mythological scenery in Babel is confusing... Those people there, proud and presumptuous, think they could reach God, building a tower to Him. Human pride gets blocked by the diversity of languages between those men and women, which obliges them to give up on that tower. How many times have we also tried to reach God on our own? We have built a one-side relationship with what we think that is God, and followed our "Babel-path" to try to reach Him, unsuccessfully.
In Pentecost, however, the Babel-effect was eliminated by God. The Blessed Virgin Mary, the Holy Apostles, many other disciples - from around the world - were there. Unlike Babel, they didn't have any intention to reach God by themselves. They were very apprehensive with Christ's ascension. They begged God for help. There, at that moment, God was manifested to them with a comforting face, bringing one sole language to them. Babel's curse was broken. All were a new people again. All of them could understand each other perfectly. That was the harvest of something new: the Church of Christ... Christ - the word made flesh; the one who came to fulfill the law and free us all from the burdens of sin.
To me, Pentecost was the first council of the Church. Of course, History tells us that such an event would happen some time after that, in Jerusalem. However, I see Pentecost as the most striking example of what God wanted for His people. In Pentecost, there are no outcasts. All people who were there received the Holy Spirit. And it is a shame that, almost two thousand years after that event, we do not notice that the true Church of Christ cannot have pariahs. Yes, my beloved, God did not deliver invitations to a pre-determined set of people to be in Pentecost. It was not a feast restricted to a select group of people who would not cause controversies. There were all sorts of people there: women, men, rich, poor, single, married, partnered, black, white, mixed-race, slaves, freemen... People from all nations, of all hues, with all sorts of backgrounds... People who wanted to live Christ's Church.The diabolic forces of exclusion try to weaken the wonder of an inclusive God, who calls everybody to a life of intimacy with Him. Barriers were created in churches for those who do not fit in the "desirable" profile for them. And, if we had advances in including the poor, women and black people in the ecclesial life, it would still be a scandal if a transvestite entered through that door. Suspicious eyes would gaze that human being who needs love. The church that announces she is Chirst's continues to expel people who need Christ.
The imposition of barriers to the full membership of any human being in the Church is to act as the Holy Spirit's police. It is a means of saying that the Holy Spirit does not act the same way as in Pentecost, purifying those people's hearts and allowing all of them to speak the same language. It is a denial of the Holy Spirit's willingness to act upon the Church, taking it to more fraternal and righteous ways. It is a weak attempt to be God, selecting who can and who cannot be part of that group.
And, when we try to be God, we come back to Babel.
The most ridiculous cliché I've heard lately is the notorious "love the sinner, hate the sin". Good people, Jesus never said that. This is human talk, used to justify their prejudices with an appearance of holiness. On the contrary, He told us we would receive the Holy Spirit, and forgive the sin, as today's Gospel says.
The church of Pentecost is the church of forgiveness and reconciliation. This is because in Pentecost, we celebrate the descent of the Spirit upon us. Jesus promised that. Yes, the one who, through his death and resurrection, re-conciliated the whole world. Pentecost is for all. All! And when I repeat this word "all", I remember Archbishop Desmond Tutu (former primate of the Church of Southern Africa and Nobel Prize), who repeated that word many times to remember us that "God sent His son for ALL, ALL, ALL"... Christ's language unifies. The Holy Spirit guides us.
My hope is that we will be able, through the action of the Holy Spirit, to have words of wisdom to fight exclusion inside the Church; to teach a Gospel of liberation for all people; to have faith in a better world, in which the kingdoms of this world will be transformed into the Kingdom of Christ; to manifest cure among us, not only physical, but also spiritual - may this church be a place of relief for those who enter through those doors; to have the capacity of performing miracles in the name of Christ, taking His word to the extremes of society; to prophesize the end of divisions and exclusions within the Church; to speak different languages and interpret those languages, so we will be only one voice.
The Lord is the same. There is diversity of works, but the same God works in all.
Receive the Holy Spirit; for those whose sins you forgive, they are forgiven; for those whose sins you retain, they are retained.
O come Holy Spirit!
Sermon preached at Christ the King, a parish of the Anglican Diocese of Rio de Janeiro, in 05/27/2007.
